Susan
Sontag and the Rape of American Thinkingby Jared
Israel (5-30-00)

The western media is beginning to report -
most likely underreport - a crime beyond belief.

Young women (as many as 500 000 a year,
according to the London Sunday Times) are being kidnapped
from Eastern Europe. 500 000 a year. They aren't forced
to work in sweatshops. They are forced into prostitution
all over Europe. Tens of thousands are held in Bosnia and
Kosovo, where they service NATO troops as well as the
employees of UN and humanitarian organizations.

These are teenagers, many as young as 14. How
are we supposed to think about this? Thousands of young
people, raped every day.

A decade ago, the West promised East Europeans
a rosy future for their children if they got rid of
communism. This is the future.

Which brings us to Susan Sontag.

Do you remember Sontag? She's the essayist who
along with Bianca Jaeger and other feminists attacked the
Serbs during the Bosnian war for supposed crimes of mass
rape.

Being an essayist isn't the easiest way to
make a buck in the USA, but don't feel bad for Sontag.
She does fine.

Her books get published. More: serious money
is spent advertising her books, which is good for sales.
More: she gets plugged by the media (which is great for
sales) including TV shows like public television's 'News
Hour with Jim Lehrer' where critic Roger Rosenblatt said
"The [American] essay shines in the imaginative
hands of ...Susan Sontag." (May 6, 1999)

IMAGINATIVE
HANDS

Sontag shined during the Bosnian conflict.

She traveled to Sarajevo half a dozen times
and wrote about it. Her writing may be melodramatic; also
devoid of fact. But the theme is epic, a story of good
and evil. The US' Bosnian ally (the Islamic
Fundamentalist government in Sarajevo) is good. The Serbs
are evil.

Writing along these lines in the Dec. 25, 1995
issue of the once-principled 'Nation'
magazine, Sontag compared herself (flying into Sarajevo
as a super-VIP) to the intellectuals who went to fight
fascism in the 1930s (dying in the dirt in Spain.)

Right.

She argued that their (and her)
actions stood in sharp contrast to:

"the morosely depoliticized
intellectuals of today, with their cynicism
always at the ready, their addiction to
entertainment, their reluctance to inconvenience
themselves for any cause, their devotion to
personal safety (I can't count how many times
I've been asked, each time I return to New York
from Sarajevo, how I can go to a place that's so
dangerous.)"

Note that while Sontag appears to be
criticizing "morosely depoliticized intellectuals"
she is really doing two very different things.

First, she is praising herself.

Second, she is using a tricky writing
technique to make readers more receptive to her theme:
that 'the Serbs' are monsters.

Nowhere in the article does Sontag offer
actual evidence of Serbian monstrousness.

Rather, she employs a technique I call 'The
Consequent Argument'. The way it works is, the writer
doesn't honestly state what she is trying to prove and
then provide evidence. Instead she writes in a way that
takes for granted that what she wants to prove is already
proven, that it is obviously true, and then makes
comments that would follow if in fact it were true. This
tends to sweep the reader into accepting the unproven
point.

Thus, Sontag says, "I can't count how
many times I've been asked...how I can go to a place
that's so dangerous."

Frankly, I find it unbelievable that "uncountable"
(i.e., very large) numbers of people actually went up to
Susan Sontag and breathlessly praised her bravery for
going to Sarajevo.

I doubt that one person did it unless said
person was a shill.

shill (shîl) Slang.
noun - One
who poses as a satisfied customer or an
enthusiastic gambler to dupe bystanders into
participating in a swindle.

By first castigating other intellectuals as
physical cowards (as if they had all been offered and
declined invitations to go on expenses-paid, media-hyped
trips to Sarajevo) and then making the preposterous claim
that "uncountable" numbers of people expressed
amazement at her bravery, Sontag tries to create in
readers minds the impression that Sarajevo was the victim
of unimaginable horror (perpetrated, of course, by 'the
Serbs'.) That impression is intended to put readers in
the proper frame of mind to uncritically accept some
truly bizarre charges.

Sontag's
accusation

Sontag claims that Bosnian Serb troops
indulged in:

"the rape by
military order of tens of
thousands of women throughout Serb-captured
Bosnia." (ibid., my
emphasis)

Aside from the absurdity of this small, hard-pressed
army, stretched out along a one thousand mile front,
raping tens of thousands of women, the mass rape stories
rely on a false impression, carefully cultivated by the
Western media: that the Bosnian Serb army was an
aggressive invading force that "captured territory".
This is wrong on both counts: they were mainly a
defensive force and they were in fact defending their own
territory.

A local army

The classic army rape situation occurs when
young men occupy a hated/feared country far from the
home, separated from wives and girlfriends.

The Bosnian Serb Army was not an army of
occupation, far from home. For example, Serbian forces
did not 'take over' the hills outside Sarajevo. Serbs
have lived in towns around Sarajevo for over a thousand
years (or, more precisely, since the Seventh Century.)
Indeed, for centuries ethnic Serbs have made up most of
the inhabitants of Bosnia. Bosnian Muslims, so-called,
are mostly Serbs (sometimes Croats) who switched from
Christianity to Islam under the pressure of Turkish rule.

Before the fighting began in Bosnia, the
Serbs, mainly farmers, owned the majority of land. Their
army, allied with moderate Muslim units led by Fikret
Abdic, had a defensive strategy during the war. That's
one reason they never seized Sarajevo. (Incidentally,
Sarajevo was about 25% ethnic Serbian; the villages
around it were almost entirely Serbian. Sarajevo was
surrounded by Serbs not due to intrusion but by virtue of
demographics.)

Because the Bosnian Serb army was a homegrown
army, the soldiers had regular relationships with their
wives and womenfriends.

Why would the Serbian Command order troops to
engage in criminal actions that would inevitably destroy
these sustaining relationships?

Isn't it unconscionable for Sontag and other
feminists to accuse an entire people of committing
horrendous crimes on a grand scale without offering the
least bit of factual evidence?

"No one denies that many rapes
occurred during the civil wars in Croatia and
Bosnia-Herzegovina, or that rape is a serious
violation of human rights. So is war, for that
matter. From the start, however, inquiry into
rape in Bosnia-Herzegovina focused exclusively on
accusations that Serbs were raping Muslim women
as part of a deliberate strategy. The most
inflated figures, freely extrapolated by
multiplying the number of known cases by large
factors, were readily accepted by the media and
international organizations. No interest was
shown in detailed and documented reports of rapes
of Serbian women by Muslims or Croats. The late
Nora Beloff, former chief political correspondent
of the London Observer, described her own search
for verification of the rape charges in a letter
to The Daily Telegraph (January 19, 1993). The
British Foreign Office conceded that the rape
figures being bandied about were totally
uncorroborated, and referred her to the Danish
government, then chairing the European Union.
Copenhagen agreed that the reports were
unsubstantiated, but kept repeating them. Both
said that the EU had taken up the "rape
atrocity" issue at its December 1992
Edinburgh summit exclusively on the basis of a
German initiative. In turn, Fran Wild, in charge
of the Bosnian Desk in the German Foreign
Ministry, told Ms. Beloff that the material on
Serb rapes cam partly from the Izetbegovic
government and partly from the Catholic charity
Caritas in Croatia. No effort had been made to
seek corroboration from more impartial sources.
Despite the absence of solid and comprehensive
information, a cottage industry has since
developed around the theme. See: Norma von
Ragenfeld-Feldman, "The Victimization of
Women: Rape and the Reporting of Rape in Bosnia-Herzegovina,
1992-1993," Dialogue (Paris), No. 21, March
1997; and Diana Johnstone, "Selective
Justice in The Hague," The Nation, Sept. 22,
1997, pp. 16-21." (2)

In 'The
Media and Their Atrocities', (1)
Michael Parenti, an essayist whom the Lehrer Hour has yet
to praise, notes that: "Common sense would dictate
that these stories [of mass rape] be treated with the
utmost skepticism--and not be used as an excuse for...punitive
policy against Yugoslavia."

Indeed. And common sense might also suggest
some consistency of outrage, especially in cases where
abuses against women are actually taking place. Which
brings us back to Susan Sontag and the forced-prostitution
industry in Kosovo and Bosnia.

Susan Sontag's
silence

Using Lexis, the Internet search tool, I
scanned most of the English speaking media worldwide. My
search covered the last nine months. During that time
there is not one reference to Susan Sontag speaking out
against the forced prostitution industry in Kosovo and
Bosnia. If Sontag is really concerned about women, why is
she waiting? Is it because nobody is offering to make her
a star for covering this story? Is it because the
prostitution industry in Kosovo is run by US allies (the
"former" KLA), that it operates with the tactic
approval of UN and NATO big shots?

Bill Gordon, a New York reader, provoked this
column by asking the question: "Where are the Susan
Sontags, the Bianca Jaegers and all those concerned
feminist celebrities (paid for hire) who demanded that
the Western governments dismember the "anti-woman"
Serbian state (read: Yugoslavia)?"

It seems that starting in the
early 1950s, the CIA paid out huge sums to intellectuals
to make sure they adopted the proper views.

Supposedly this all ended with
the fall of communism.

But why would it have ended?
Why would the CIA drop a successful intelligence program?

Isn't the intelligence
apparatus many times bigger and vastly richer today then,
let us say, during the early 1950s? If they bribed
intellectuals then, why wouldn't they bribe intellectuals
today?

Payment doesn't have to take
the crude form of handing out wads of cash the way the
CIA did in the 50s - though I wouldn't underestimate the
power of crude cash. Some say it makes the best wedding
present.

Payment can also take the form
of professional recognition and advancement.

In the tightly controlled mega-world
of American arts and media, access is denied to those who
disobey the rules. And the main rule is: parrot the line
of the American Empire.

Parroting is the predictor of
position.

As the English poet William
Blake said two hundred years ago:

"The enquiry in
England is not whether a man has talents &
genius, but whether he is passive & polite
& a virtuous ass & obedient to noblemen's
opinions in art & science. If he is, he is a
good man. If not, he must be starved." (William
Blake, Annotations
to Sir Joshua Reynolds)

Recently I had a direct
encounter with the rules of Empire. I was contacted by the assistant editor
of the NY Times
op ed page. (4)
She wanted to run a piece by Blagovesta Doncheva, the
Bulgarian political writer. Doncheva had published an
article with Emperors-clothes called 'Open Letter to the
Serbian Opposition'. It described the ruin of Bulgarian
society under pro-Western 'democracy'. It warned that the
Serbian opposition would, if successful, preside over the
West's devastation of Serbia.

I asked the NY
Times editor if there were any
limits to what Ms. Doncheva could write. The editor
answered, 'Of course there are. She can't mention Serbia.'

The cardinal rule of the New
World Order is: 'If you don't have anything bad to say
about Serbia don't say anything at all."

"She can't mention Serbia."
A striking restriction for an article addressed to the
Serbian opposition, wouldn't you say? But the editor
informed me of this rule in a calm, matter-of-fact voice,
without apology: a rule is a rule.

Are you thinking (or hoping)
that maybe this is a peculiarity of the NY
Times, not the American Empire?
Then please consider: during the past three years, the
First Prize in each of top three photo-journalism awards
has been awarded to a picture depicting an Albanian woman
crying. (5)

There is one exception: this
year's First Place award in the
prestigious World Press contest went to a photo of an
Albanian man with a bandage on his nose. Also given
prizes were pictures of Albanian women crying, taken by
the same Greek Reuters
photographer who won last years' Pulitzer for...an
Albanian women crying.

Sounds as if we've entered a
whole new universe, doesn't it? As if we're characters in
a 'Twilight Zone'
episode. Or maybe the world has been taken over by aliens
and we're in 'The Body Snatchers'.

How could all these awards go
to pictures of suffering Albanians if the artistic and
intellectual life of our society were not organized to
serve the New World Order?

Or consider book publishing.

Not only have a slew of books
appeared during the 1990s demonizing the Serbs as
villains in Yugoslavia. Not only are these anti-Serbian
books often given big advertising budgets, major media
exposure and reviews in choice publications such as the NY
Times. Not only has no major
Western book company ever published any book defending
the Serbs and arguing the highly arguable (because
factual) case that the US and Germany secretly encouraged
the breakup of Yugoslavia (6) even before the secession of Croatia
and Slovenia.

Does the American essay in fact
"shine in the imaginative hands" of Susan
Sontag? Or does Susan Sontag receive favorable reviews in
places like the Lehrer Hour because she prostitutes
herself in the service of empire?

It is fitting symbolism that on
the same evening that the Lehrer News Hour glorified
Sontag it also featured an interview with Blerim
Shala, editor of the Kosovo weekly, 'Zeri'.
In that interview (and elsewhere) Shala was touted as an
independent ethnic Albanian political thinker. There are
indeed independent ethnic Albanian political thinkers,
but Shala isn't one of them. He is a key agent of the US
State Department and a leading advocate of the terrorist-secessionist
forces in Kosovo.

Why do I refer to 'fitting symbolism'? Because
while Shala, who told listeners that bombing was the best
thing for Kosovo, was presented as an 'independent'
thinker, Sontag, who has achieved star status by
spreading lies about a people, was presented as an
imaginative intellectual. Thus Lehrer showcased two
important types in the American Empire: he who organizes
racist terror and she who slanders the victim. And all in
the name of justice.

*** (Note: the article on CIA bribing of
intellectuals is posted below)

A grainy black-and-white photograph from the
Fifties graces the cover of Frances Stonor Saunders's new
history of the CIA's cultural cold warriors. Four men sit
hunched round a table strewn with the remains of a meal;
there are wineglasses smeared with fingerprints and the
dregs of a bottle, while an afternoon sun slants through
large windows. One man throws a menacing glance over his
shoulder at the photographer.

That look, and this clutch of figures, speak
volumes about the mission of that tight network of
intellectuals and espionage agents who worked alongside
the CIA to promote the ideal of a new age of
enlightenment - the pax Americana. Fearful of the Soviet
Union's cultural influence, the agency operated a
sophisticated cultural front to win over leftist artists
and their audiences. This was the cold warriors' "battle
for men's minds", stockpiled with a vast arsenal of
journals, books, conferences, seminars, exhibitions,
concerts and awards.

Among the agency's most powerful operators was
Michael Josselson, a former agent in the intelligence
section of the Psychological Warfare Division. He went on
to head the influential Congress for Cultural Freedom.
Stonor Saunders vividly captures both Josselson's
character, and the dynamic appeal of the pax Americana to
a young Jewish intellectual with a passionate interest in
literature and the right political bent. His network
relied on his friends, many former members of the wartime
Office of Strategic Services, and on his wife, Diana
Dodge. After their wedding in Paris in 1953, he confessed
that he was not really in the import- export business.
Together, the couple formed an effective partnership.

Diana describes an idyllic life in postwar
Paris where "you felt you were in touch with
everything going on everywhere - things were blossoming,
it was vital". She also succumbed to the romantic
fantasy of the intelligence world, and was given her own
code name. An agent would hand over memos and cables from
Washington to Michael during their Martini hour at the
Josselsons's apartment. "We'd read the incoming
cables, then I'd flush them down the toilet."

But there was more to the American cultural
frontline than romance and ideological conviction. The
agency's biggest weapon was its bank account. From its
inception in 1952, the Congress that Josselson headed
received millions of dollars to act as America's
unofficial Ministry of Culture. "We couldn't spend
it all," recalled former CIA agent Gilbert Greenway.
"There were no limits, and nobody had to account for
it. It was amazing."

Radio Free Europe alone received a budget of $10m
at its founding in Berlin in 1950. Elsewhere, a former case officer
described piling his car high with
bundles of dollar bills for distribution into "quiet
channels". By the Sixties a joke was circulating
that, if any American philanthropic or cultural
organisation carried the words "free" or "private",
it must be a CIA front.

While thousands reaped the benefits of their
position, others were victimised by the agency's
relentless pursuit of Communist "fellow travellers"
in the arts. During spring 1953, when the impact of the
Rosenbergs' treason trial and execution had exposed
resentment at America's presence in Europe, the United
States Information Agency conducted a purge of "pro-Communist
writers". More than 30,000 books were banned from
USIA libraries, including works by Dashiell Hammett,
Langston Hughes, John Reed and Herman Melville. The
number of titles shipped abroad by USIA in 1953 plunged
from 119,913 to 314.

When the CIA's involvement in American culture
was finally exposed in the Sixties, it revealed a
staggering number of household-name artists who had
received its tainted funds. Through myriad projects, from
cash- heavy prizes to magazines such as Encounter and
international conferences, the beneficiaries included WH
Auden, AA Milne, Nancy Mitford, Mary MacCarthy, Stephen
Spender, Jackson Pollock, Isaiah Berlin and George Orwell.
Did they realise they were being used? Stonor Saunders
argues that most of these artists knew where their money
was coming from and "if they didn't they were...
cultivatedly and culpably, ignorant".

The damage the CIA caused was irreparable and
pervasive. Behind the "unexamined nostalgia for the
`Golden Days' of American intelligence lay a more
devastating truth," Stonor Saunders writes. "The
same people who read Dante and went to Yale and were
educated in civic virtue recruited Nazis, manipulated the
outcome of democratic elections, gave LSD to unwitting
subjects, opened the mail of thousands of American
citizens, overthrew governments, supported dictatorships,
plotted assassinations, and engineered the Bay of Pigs
disaster." "In the name of what?" asked
one critic. "Not civic virtue, but empire."

Who Paid the Piper? illuminates a dark corner
of America's cultural history, drawing on an
extraordinary range of interviews and recently opened
documents. Frances Stonor Saunders is strong on
biographical sketches, and a thorough researcher. But
questions about the real impact of the cultural cold war
remain to be answered. In spite of its murky sources, did
this money still produce some of the most significant art
of the 20th century?

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